Due to the mid-season hiatus that most network television shows are taking right now, there has been very little to comment on. The one exception might have been a recent episode of Numb3rs where an author of a piece of malicious software was found by analysing a "strange loop" found in the program. But sadly, the producers avoided another lambasting by not attempting to explain how Bernard the Elf was actually able to do this, so short of just saying "what the f***?!," I'll point out that if you read the Wikipedia entry for strange loop and then watch the episode, you'll find that the two explanations are strangely similar.
While doing a critique of pure science fiction would be a little silly, one of the characters in the show Heroes, brings up an interesting mental exercise and, more importantly, provides me with a much needed topic of discussion.
If you are not familiar with the show, its the story of 9 or so people who have, through some form of genetic mutation, gained superhuman abilities. These abilities range from the ever popular flying and invisibility to the somewhat esoteric power of producing nuclear reactions with your body.
The character in question is Micah. Micah is the child of a woman who seems to be her own doppelganger and a man who can walk through walls. Not sure how the combination of those two mutations produced the ability to manipulate electronic devices, but that's what Micah can do.
We have only seen Micah use his ability twice, the first time he makes a phone call from a broken pay phone. The second time, he makes an unauthorized withdrawal from an ATM. The show has not yet explained how the ability actually manifests itself, but for the sake of argument, lets assume that its one of two ways:
1) Micah is able to generate electromagnetic energy that can mimic electronic components in the device, such as transistors or complete microchips
2) His body is able to produce nanoparticles that infiltrate the device and build circuitry that allows him to control it--similar to those produced by the Terminatrix in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
So the exercise would be this: how would you defend a system against this type of attack?
The first thing that comes to mind is shielding--enclosing your system in a Faraday cage would probably do the trick for the first possible manifestation. For those of you not familiar with this type of shielding, a Faraday cage is an enclosure that is constructed in such a way that it either blocks or redirects electromagnetic and electronic fields so that they do not penetrate the surface of the enclosure. The most common example of this is the shielding they use in microwave ovens to prevent your eye balls from boiling when you press your nose up against the widow to watch Spaghetti-Os splatter all over the interior.
The second possible manifestation is a little more tricky to solve since their are no real life equivalents. One idea I came up with is creating nanotube mazes that would trap enough nanoparticles to limit any potential damage. The closest possible analogy to how this would work is fiberglass insulation, which slows the progress of heat and cold by trapping it in the various chambers that the fibers create. If you could develop some sort of attractor that would divert the nanoparticles into the tubes, you could create a semi-permeable membrane that would allow coolant or electricity pass.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated in the last Terminator movie, an easy way to get by this type of protection is to simply pierce the membrane and inject the particles into the area that is being protected. Unlike the Terminatrix, Micah does not have the power to change one of his fingers into an awl, but that wouldn't stop him from using an icepick to accomplish the same thing. To prevent this, you would have to completely encase the device with the membrane to eliminate any open space were the nanopartcles could form circuitry.
The problem with both of these method is the fact that devices such as ATMs and RFID readers need to interface directly with humans and electromagnetic radiation. This poses a problem since you may not be able to shield these devices completely, allowing avenues of attack to remain.
In these cases you might have to develop some kind of reverse Turing test by which each component in the system can verify that the signals they are receiving are not coming from a human, nor coming from circuitry that may have recently be built.
Turing tests were develop by Alan Turing in the early 1950's to determine the humanness of artificial intelligence implementations. The basic test would consist of a human judge conversing with two entities, one human and one computer. If the judge is unable to tell which is which, then the implementation passes the test.
If you remember that annoying little program called Eliza, which was intended to mimic a psychotherapist, you'll also remember that it was hard to tell the difference between her (the program) and drunk high school student that has been through peer counselor training. Whether this is a sign of actual intelligence, or not, is up for debate, but you get the point.
This approach has been used, somewhat in reverse, to help stop spam and other automated attacks against computer systems. You may have been fooled yourself by those annoying CAPTCHAs the last time you signed up for a online service or posted to bulletin board. CAPTCHA is short for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" and consist of a bunch of obscured text, usually against a textured background, that are intended to fool computer based optical character recognition systems, otherwise know as OCR. It also tends to fool drunk people and those whose cognitive dysfunction is not chemically induced.
You can also see something similar in the move Blade Runner. They call the test Voight-Kampff (for short) and it consists of a series of questions that will cause an artificial human to respond in non-human ways. As seen throughout the movie, the tester would use a device that monitors changes in the eye, most notably involuntary dilation of the iris, and after a battery of questions like "describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother," he would make the determination of human or Replicant, or get shot, depending on how good he was.
We will have to wait to see how the writers of Heroes decide to handle Micah and whether anyone will be able to protect their computer systems against his ability. It will also be interesting to see how close my speculation was...
Watch Heroes for free on NBC.com.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies
http://w5.cs.uni-sb.de/~butz/teaching/ie-ss03/papers/HCIinSF/
This is an interesting paper on depictions of computer interfaces in some recent, and not so recent, science fiction movies. What I found most interesting was the influence of the MIT media lab, and other research, on the production design of Minority Report. There is also discussion of various biometric identification systems, from Gattaca's finger prick DNA test, to a seemingly absurd breath ID system show in Alien Resurrection.
It makes me wonder why information security research has not had as much influence on the entertainment industry. Part of me thinks that its simple because its not as flashy as interface design, but I wonder if its due more to the fact that information security research is often conducted in a culture of secrecy and need-to-know fraternities. In other words, would a University open up a computer virus research lab to a screen writer, or would a company like Symantec talk candidly with a screen writer about emerging trends in malware? I think the answer is no, but I could be wrong.
This is an interesting paper on depictions of computer interfaces in some recent, and not so recent, science fiction movies. What I found most interesting was the influence of the MIT media lab, and other research, on the production design of Minority Report. There is also discussion of various biometric identification systems, from Gattaca's finger prick DNA test, to a seemingly absurd breath ID system show in Alien Resurrection.
It makes me wonder why information security research has not had as much influence on the entertainment industry. Part of me thinks that its simple because its not as flashy as interface design, but I wonder if its due more to the fact that information security research is often conducted in a culture of secrecy and need-to-know fraternities. In other words, would a University open up a computer virus research lab to a screen writer, or would a company like Symantec talk candidly with a screen writer about emerging trends in malware? I think the answer is no, but I could be wrong.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Prologue Revistsed
I missed the third approach. I completely overlooked it. Ironically, this is usually what happens when screen writers or production crew use it. The third approach is doing proper research and getting it right. What's the down side of this? 99.9% of your audience will probably never even notice.
The best example of this is The Matrix Reloaded. If you were paying close attention and knew what you were looking for, you would have noticed that when Trinity hacks into the power plant's computer system, she uses a real-life security tool and exploit. But I bet you didn't.
You can read about it in this poorly researched BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3039329.stm
Apparently this triggered a warning from The British Computer Society. I have a hard time believing that this is real, but the press release is still available on the Internet Way Back Machine so you can make your own judgements:
http://www.bcs.org/BCS/News/PressReleases/2003/
May/PressReleases2003MayMatrixTricksWarning.htm
The best example of this is The Matrix Reloaded. If you were paying close attention and knew what you were looking for, you would have noticed that when Trinity hacks into the power plant's computer system, she uses a real-life security tool and exploit. But I bet you didn't.
You can read about it in this poorly researched BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3039329.stm
Apparently this triggered a warning from The British Computer Society. I have a hard time believing that this is real, but the press release is still available on the Internet Way Back Machine so you can make your own judgements:
http://www.bcs.org/BCS/News/PressReleases/2003/
May/PressReleases2003MayMatrixTricksWarning.htm
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Numb3rs "One Hour"
Numb3rs is a crime drama that centers around an FBI agent and his brother, a former math prodigy who is now a professor at a prestigious technical college--the fictional Cal Sci. A typical story line begins with a perplexing crime and when the FBI gets stuck, the math genius and his colleagues are brought in to help close the case.
"One Hour" strays a bit from this formula--the first half of this show focuses on a technological challenge rather than something that can be solved mathematically. The story begins with a violent kidnapping of a music mogul's child. Shortly after the FBI team arrives on the scene, they receive a ransom demand on the dead bodyguard's cell phone. The FBI agent who answered the call notices that the caller's phone number is a string of ones and when the FBI techs "ping" the number (I don't even know where to begin with that one) they determine the call originated as VoIP. Unable to trace the VoIP call on their own, the FBI calls in the pros from Cal Sci to help them out.
After being told they have less than one hour to find the kidnappers, the two professors jump in their car and, on the way to the FBI offices, one of them writes an "exploit" that will allow them to trace incoming VoIP calls from a cell phone which the kidnappers would call to give further instructions.
This is where the screen writers get themselves into trouble. They start innocently by describing VoIP as Voice Over Internet Protocol--although technically correct, I have yet to hear an industry professional say anything other than Voice Over IP. A nit-picky point, I admit, but when you say it the way the actors did, it sounds as if there is an actual protocol called Voice Over Internet (there isn't.)
It might have been better to say that VoIP is a collection of protocols and other technologies that allow telephone calls to be placed over Internet Protocol (IP) based networks, like the Internet or your office LAN. Was that so hard to say?
Defying all reason, these intellectual giants were able to write an application that would run on an unknown cell phone, connected to a unknown providers network, and somehow install it on the correct handset, based solely on a phone number given to them by the FBI. And all that in under fifteen minutes! I wish I was that good.
The screen writers problems become less earnest when you realized that a VoIP call would have to be terminated on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) prior to making its way to a cellular phone network, and subsequently, to the cell phone.
What this means is there is no practical way to get the originating IP address of a VoIP call in the way they described. In reality, the call would have to traverse three different network that do not share common protocols or addressing systems.
Given enough time and access to the right data, theoretically you could pull the trace off, but its not as simple as they try to make it sound with their analogy of tracking a piece of luggage from airport to airport. Its more like tracking a piece of luggage through an airport, then a train station, and finally a taxi stand.
I suspect that a script consultant made the same realization about halfway through the shoot, because in the following scene, they explain that the cell phone had a program installed on it that allowed it to make and receive VoIP calls directly, therefore bypassing the need for PSTN termination. They further explained that the kidnappers were using this application to avoid paying for the PSTN termination, eliminating a credit card trail that could possibly identify them. Wow. I really wish I could hire these writer the next time I get into a technological pickle at work. Does anyone have their number?
Even though the writers blundered in regards to VoIP, the fact that the professors could trace the IP address to a physical location is not a fantasy dreamed up to expedite the plot--although the writers did exaggerated its effectiveness, just a bit.
Lets assume the IP address they got from the trace was 206.18.32.25. A simple query to the American Registry for Internet Numbers--a database that contains all of the IP address assignments for North American and some of the outlying island--would have given them the owner of the IP address in question.
Let's see what we get:
(Actual results from http://ws.arin.net/whois)
OrgName: Los Angeles Public Library
OrgID: LAPL
Address: 630 W. Fifth St.
City: Los Angeles
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90071
Country: US
It seems that we got lucky. Sometimes the information contained in these registries is not as accurate as you might want. IP addresses are reassigned without notifying the registry, and the mailing addresses shown are often that of administrative or support offices, not the physical location where the IP address is in use.
In this case, the street address is actually the Central Branch of the Los Angles Public Library. This was verified easily though the Library's Web site. I love how canned examples always work out so nicely.
In case your are interested, there are four other registries that provide similar information for South America, Africa, Europe and Asia Pacific, respectively.
A good information security practitioner will have a few techniques that can be used to work around the inaccurate information you find in these registries, but the end-all-be-all method--which is supposed to incorporate all of the available technique to produce significantly more accurate results--is IP GeoLocation. You can try it yourself on this free service:
My IP address returns a latitude and longitude about 15 miles north of my actual location. Using some of the other techniques that I didn't bore you with, you may have been able to get it down to about 5 miles southeast of where I am sitting. In either case, had the fictional kidnappers been using my WiFi, the poor FBI agent would have been listening to the wrong librarian complain about people talking on their phones, while the kidnappers laughed all the way to the bank. Its a good thing we don't listen to marketing hype.
On a side note, about 40 minutes into the program, you can see some quick shots of the application the two brainiacs are using to locate the kidnappers. The laptop screen shows a map and a series of area codes and prefixes for phone numbers in the greater Los Angeles area. I'm not sure how that really helps them map IP addresses to geographic locations, but I am not a Cal Sci graduate, so who am I to judge?
Finally, as you may know, TV shows and movies are not typically shot in chronological order. This may explain why the young professors, towards the end of the show, were suddenly able to trace a VoIP call that was made to a public pay phone. I suspect, by the time someone pointed out the issues in the script, the production crew had already shot the last scene and was not have been able to re-shoot it with the corrections. There was mention of someone violating two or three communications laws at one point, which may be another explanation, but sitting in the Los Angeles offices of the FBI, why would two professors from a top technical college risk jail time by doing something like that? I know I wouldn't.
To view this episode for free on CBS.com:
http://www.cbs.com/innertube/
"One Hour" strays a bit from this formula--the first half of this show focuses on a technological challenge rather than something that can be solved mathematically. The story begins with a violent kidnapping of a music mogul's child. Shortly after the FBI team arrives on the scene, they receive a ransom demand on the dead bodyguard's cell phone. The FBI agent who answered the call notices that the caller's phone number is a string of ones and when the FBI techs "ping" the number (I don't even know where to begin with that one) they determine the call originated as VoIP. Unable to trace the VoIP call on their own, the FBI calls in the pros from Cal Sci to help them out.
After being told they have less than one hour to find the kidnappers, the two professors jump in their car and, on the way to the FBI offices, one of them writes an "exploit" that will allow them to trace incoming VoIP calls from a cell phone which the kidnappers would call to give further instructions.
This is where the screen writers get themselves into trouble. They start innocently by describing VoIP as Voice Over Internet Protocol--although technically correct, I have yet to hear an industry professional say anything other than Voice Over IP. A nit-picky point, I admit, but when you say it the way the actors did, it sounds as if there is an actual protocol called Voice Over Internet (there isn't.)
It might have been better to say that VoIP is a collection of protocols and other technologies that allow telephone calls to be placed over Internet Protocol (IP) based networks, like the Internet or your office LAN. Was that so hard to say?
Defying all reason, these intellectual giants were able to write an application that would run on an unknown cell phone, connected to a unknown providers network, and somehow install it on the correct handset, based solely on a phone number given to them by the FBI. And all that in under fifteen minutes! I wish I was that good.
The screen writers problems become less earnest when you realized that a VoIP call would have to be terminated on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) prior to making its way to a cellular phone network, and subsequently, to the cell phone.
What this means is there is no practical way to get the originating IP address of a VoIP call in the way they described. In reality, the call would have to traverse three different network that do not share common protocols or addressing systems.
Given enough time and access to the right data, theoretically you could pull the trace off, but its not as simple as they try to make it sound with their analogy of tracking a piece of luggage from airport to airport. Its more like tracking a piece of luggage through an airport, then a train station, and finally a taxi stand.
I suspect that a script consultant made the same realization about halfway through the shoot, because in the following scene, they explain that the cell phone had a program installed on it that allowed it to make and receive VoIP calls directly, therefore bypassing the need for PSTN termination. They further explained that the kidnappers were using this application to avoid paying for the PSTN termination, eliminating a credit card trail that could possibly identify them. Wow. I really wish I could hire these writer the next time I get into a technological pickle at work. Does anyone have their number?
Even though the writers blundered in regards to VoIP, the fact that the professors could trace the IP address to a physical location is not a fantasy dreamed up to expedite the plot--although the writers did exaggerated its effectiveness, just a bit.
Lets assume the IP address they got from the trace was 206.18.32.25. A simple query to the American Registry for Internet Numbers--a database that contains all of the IP address assignments for North American and some of the outlying island--would have given them the owner of the IP address in question.
Let's see what we get:
(Actual results from http://ws.arin.net/whois)
OrgName: Los Angeles Public Library
OrgID: LAPL
Address: 630 W. Fifth St.
City: Los Angeles
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90071
Country: US
It seems that we got lucky. Sometimes the information contained in these registries is not as accurate as you might want. IP addresses are reassigned without notifying the registry, and the mailing addresses shown are often that of administrative or support offices, not the physical location where the IP address is in use.
In this case, the street address is actually the Central Branch of the Los Angles Public Library. This was verified easily though the Library's Web site. I love how canned examples always work out so nicely.
In case your are interested, there are four other registries that provide similar information for South America, Africa, Europe and Asia Pacific, respectively.
A good information security practitioner will have a few techniques that can be used to work around the inaccurate information you find in these registries, but the end-all-be-all method--which is supposed to incorporate all of the available technique to produce significantly more accurate results--is IP GeoLocation. You can try it yourself on this free service:
My IP address returns a latitude and longitude about 15 miles north of my actual location. Using some of the other techniques that I didn't bore you with, you may have been able to get it down to about 5 miles southeast of where I am sitting. In either case, had the fictional kidnappers been using my WiFi, the poor FBI agent would have been listening to the wrong librarian complain about people talking on their phones, while the kidnappers laughed all the way to the bank. Its a good thing we don't listen to marketing hype.
On a side note, about 40 minutes into the program, you can see some quick shots of the application the two brainiacs are using to locate the kidnappers. The laptop screen shows a map and a series of area codes and prefixes for phone numbers in the greater Los Angeles area. I'm not sure how that really helps them map IP addresses to geographic locations, but I am not a Cal Sci graduate, so who am I to judge?
Finally, as you may know, TV shows and movies are not typically shot in chronological order. This may explain why the young professors, towards the end of the show, were suddenly able to trace a VoIP call that was made to a public pay phone. I suspect, by the time someone pointed out the issues in the script, the production crew had already shot the last scene and was not have been able to re-shoot it with the corrections. There was mention of someone violating two or three communications laws at one point, which may be another explanation, but sitting in the Los Angeles offices of the FBI, why would two professors from a top technical college risk jail time by doing something like that? I know I wouldn't.
To view this episode for free on CBS.com:
http://www.cbs.com/innertube/
Monday, March 5, 2007
Prologue
From what I have observed, screen writers seem to take one of two approaches when they incorporate information security into their scripts. The first approach is to make everything so far-fetched that any comparison to reality would be all but impossible. The second is to pepper the script with terminology they found on the Internet, or got from some other seemly reliable source, like the guy who fixes their computer when it wont print.
The latter generally produces random lines of gibberish that are mumbled and mispronounced by unwitting actors. As an example, a film I saw recently included a scene in which one of the lead characters was monologuing on how he would fix the security problems in the FBI's computer network. During his short diatribe of networking and security jargon, the actor pronounced WAN (Wide Area Network) as Juan (the Spanish form of John.) In case you are having trouble playing along at home, WAN should rhyme with "man."
You'd think that they would have fixed that in post production with Automatic Dialog Replacement during looping. Apparently, screen writers are not the only ones who can play the terminology game.
The latter generally produces random lines of gibberish that are mumbled and mispronounced by unwitting actors. As an example, a film I saw recently included a scene in which one of the lead characters was monologuing on how he would fix the security problems in the FBI's computer network. During his short diatribe of networking and security jargon, the actor pronounced WAN (Wide Area Network) as Juan (the Spanish form of John.) In case you are having trouble playing along at home, WAN should rhyme with "man."
You'd think that they would have fixed that in post production with Automatic Dialog Replacement during looping. Apparently, screen writers are not the only ones who can play the terminology game.
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